A Ilha Misteriosa

Straight off the bat let me say this is a low 3/10, I'm being generous on this one.

Standing at three hours in length this very very very very very very loose adaptation of the Jules Verne classic Mysterious Island is a sight to behold for all the wrong reasons.

On paper it has everything going for it, it's based on the works of Jules Verne and stars Patrick Stewart, Kyle MacLachlan and Vinnie Jones..........okay forget about that last one.

So what went wrong? Well considering the cast the whole thing looks so very cheap, the cgi is dreadful and many of the costumes look they've been ripped from a run of the mill 5 buck costume shop.

The acting is such that they just don't want to be there, Vinnie Jones is worse than he's ever been. Let's make clear I have nothing against him, I think he has his place in the industry and he was hilarious in Eurotrip (2004) but right here is a performance so bad, so tacky I can't put it into mere words.

And then there is just how loose of an adaptation it is. This simply isn't in anyway shape or form the Mysterious Island, it's hard to even call this an adaptation because the content has been overhauled to such an extent you could easily have called it something else and nobody would have compared it to Jules Vernes work.

It makes you wonder why they bother doing that. Regardless when you take all those things into consideration it's hard to see this as anything but an embarrassment with a cast who look out of place in this travesty.

The Good:

Patrick Stewart

The Bad:

Yet another not even remotely loyal loose adaptation

Vinnie Jones really hams it up

Cast are simply too good for this

Shoddy cgi

Did anyone else notice that Patrick Stewart was not actually on location in Thailand with the rest of the cast. All his scenes were in a studio or against a 'Blue' screen, even when appearing to be in scenes with other actors - probably the best Special Effect in this film. Perhaps he did not realise how bad the film really was as he was not really there.

Special effects reminded me of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), although not as realistic.

It's difficult to rate the film out of 10. If you take it as a serious film it rates very low, but if you think of it as a comedy then it could be rated quite highly.

This new adaptation from Jules Verne novel starts on American Civil War , after the battle of Richmond . An Union POWs , an official named Cyrus (Kyle McLachlan) , Pencroff (Jason Durr) , an African-American soldier (Omar Gooding) , a mother (Gabrielle Anwar) and her daughter (Calvert) escape in an observation balloon and terminate stranded on a lonely South Pacific island . They must use their talents to survive dangers , facing off pirates (Vinnie Jones) and devise a way to return home . At the uncharted island find gigantic bugs and huge animals , such as large serpents , giant spiders , monstrous dragonfly , enormous rat , among them . Of course , they also encounter captain Nemo (Patrick Stewart) and his loyal helper Joseph (Roy Marsden) and his riveting submarine of the future called Nautilus . Furthermore , an unstable volcano on the edge of eruption .

This follow-up to ¨20.000 leagues under the sea¨ is an exciting fantasy-adventure full of special effects created by means of computer-generator . The runtime is overlong with several incidents and sub-plots , taking too much liberties from original novel . The cast is great but wasted , as weak performance by Patrick Stewart , unforgettable Star Trek's Piccard . Brilliant and shimmer cinematography , being filmed on location in an island of Thailand . The motion picture was middlingly directed by Russel Mulcahy.

Other versions based on this classic story are the following ones and filmed before : 1) Silent rendition made in 1929 , 2) Mysterious island directed by Cy Endfield (1961) , and starred by Michael Craig , Joan Greenwood and Herbert Lom as Nemo , with creatures designed by the master Ray Harryhausen , it's the best adaptation , and 3) European take on Mysterious island (1973) made by Juan Antonio Bardem with Omar Shariff as captain Nemo , Rik Battaglia , Gerard Tichy , among others.

I've always been an admirer of Jules Verne's novels. But this movie was certainly poorly produced. This movie has a completely different storyline from Jules Vernes novel. Like Jules Verne's novel, the film tells the story of a group of prisoners who have escaped from a Confederate prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War by a hot air balloon. They travel over the pacific and their balloon is wrecked on an island in the south Pacific, an island which is filled with mysterious secrets.

While Captain Nemo did appear in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' he didn't appear in the novel until the third quarter of the novel, while in this movie he reveals himself close to the beginning. Also there were no female characters in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' while this includes film a woman who works as a nurse at the Confederate prisoner of war camp and her teenage daughter who are among the escapees in the balloon and stranded on the island. But I suppose it does give a bit of interest to the film. While there were certainly cutthroat pirates in the novel of 'Mysterious Island' I don't recall any giant animals.

The giant creatures were certainly very terrifying in this movie. There was a giant praying mantis, giant scorpions, giant ants, and even a giant bird. These creatures certainly presented a great suspense throughout the film, the computer generated affects didn't look realistic at all. Not much fun I don't think.

This film certainly needed a lot more to make it interesting. It needed a better cast of actors for one thing, but most of all this film needed a better story-line, the story in this film is extremely dull, it's not like the story in the novel at all. Overall the only good thing about this movie was Patrick Stewart, he is such a brilliant actor! In fact he was the only reason I kept watching the film. So I have to admit this 'Mysterious Island' movie is extremely dull, I don't recommend it to anyone.

This movie started out reasonably well, and it had a excellent cast.It is very well acted by the leads but all the pirates should have their actors guilds cards taken from them.

The story is a classic, even when very artistic license is taken as in this production.

So it had two positive points, the cast and the J.Verne story line.

Sadly it is all down hill from there. I am taking into account that this is made for TV, but even so, the pirates were a joke and absolutely cartoon like. The special effects removed you out of the movie every time you started to get involved in it.They were pathetic.

If this movie was an hour long I might suggest you sit through it, but at 170 min, it was not a fun experience. I wanted to like this, and really the actors did pretty good, but I just can not recommend it.